Online casinos and bookmakers will pay billions of pounds more in tax under a steep rise in duties levied on their takings from British gamblers.
In her second budget as chancellor, Rachel Reeves announced duty changes expected to raise an extra £1.1bn a year by 2029-30, raiding a fast-growing sector that made £12.6bn from punters last year.
Shares in UK gambling firms began tumbling even before Reeves announced the change in her budget, after the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) – which assesses the likely impact of tax changes – accidentally published a document confirming that the industry had been singled out for higher taxes.
By the end of the day three major gambling companies, Rank Group, Evoke and Entain, had either revised down profit forecasts or warned of major job losses.
The boss of Entain, which owns Ladbrokes, said the company was “deeply appalled” by changes that it says will shave £150m off underlying profit by 2027. The industry’s lobby group – the Betting & Gaming Council (BGC) – lamented a “devastating hammer blow” for the sector.
The most eye-catching change is a near doubling of remote gaming duty (RGD), levied on online casinos, rising from 21% to 40% next April. The rise is higher than many investors and industry sources had expected.
Meg Hillier, the chair of the Treasury select committee, said Reeves had rightly refused to bow to industry “scaremongering”, something her committee had accused lobbyists of in a report earlier this month.
“Some parts of the gambling industry, such as racecourses and bingo halls, make a cultural contribution to our country,” she said. “This is not the case, though, for online slots and other remote gaming, which can quickly drain the bank balances of vulnerable people after just a few clicks of a button on a phone.
“It’s reassuring to see that the chancellor agrees with us on this and I look forward to discussing it further with her when she appears in front of us in December.”
General betting duty, levied on sports bets, will rise from 15% to 25% for wagers placed online from April 2027, but there will be no change for bets placed in high street bookmakers.
Bets on horse racing – a sport that relies heavily on income from gambling firms – will be exempted from the increase. Bingo duty of 10% will be abolished from April.
Reeves said she was targeting online gambling because it was “associated with the highest levels of harm”. However, she did not increase machine gaming duty, charged on income from high-street slot machines, which are also linked to high rates of addiction.
Leading figures from the gambling industry, including company chief executives and lobbyists, claim that an increase on the scale announced by the chancellor will cost jobs and ultimately damage the economy.
Grainne Hurst, the chief executive of the BGC, said the increases were a “devastating hammer blow to tens of thousands of people working in the industry”.
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She said: “The government’s budget is a massive win for the incredibly harmful, unsafe, unregulated gambling black market, which pays no tax and offers none of the protections that exist in the regulated sector.”
The government said it would allocate an extra £26m over three years to help the Gambling Commission tackle the illicit market.
Shares in the heavily indebted London-listed Evoke, which owns the 888 and William Hill brands, plunged by more than 18% on news of the changes but Rank (up 10%) and Entain (up 3.4%) both enjoyed an increase potentially on the basis that Rank would benefit from the abolition of bingo duty, while both could prosper if smaller rivals, unable to cope with duty rises, are forced out of the UK.
However, all three companies warned of a financial hit in statements to investors after the London Stock Exchange closed. Entain expects underlying profit to fall by £100m next year and £150m the year after, although it expects to gain market share. Evoke, which owns William Hill and 888, predicted extra duty costs of £135m, while Rank forecast a £40m hit to operating profit.
The OBR said it expected the changes to raise an extra £1.1bn a year for the Treasury by 2029-30. The figure would be higher, at £1.8bn, but the government expects some customers to bet less and admits that others are likely to switch to the illicit market, as the extra duty is passed on to consumers in the form of less attractive odds and bonuses.
Reeves explicitly linked the increase to the government’s decision to lift the two-child cap on child benefit, listing the duty rise among the measures that funded the latter decision.
The former prime minister and chancellor Gordon Brown previously called for a larger increase in duties, raising about £3bn, to pay for lifting children out of poverty.
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You’re probably reading this article on a phone or laptop containing more than 30 different metals. Some will be common: aluminium casing, copper wires. But other metals are less familiar and much more scarce. Each iPhone contains less than a gram of lithium, for instance, but would not function without it.
We are in the midst of a geopolitically charged race for lithium and other so-called critical minerals. These materials are crucial for renewable energy, transport, data centres, aerospace and defence, among other things, and the transition to net zero will place unprecedented pressure on their supplies.
Accordingly, the UK has just published a new Critical Minerals Strategy, identifying 34 of these raw materials as essential for national security and the economy. Meeting demand for them will be a monumental challenge.
Take copper: even though it is a well-established commodity, in the coming decades the world will need more of it than has ever been mined in human history. Yet opening a new mine takes a decade and costs billions.
Other minerals, such as cobalt or the 17 “rare earth elements”, present a different problem: supplies are concentrated in countries with competing strategic interests or developing nations, and can be hard to access.
For instance, most high-performance magnets – including those in wind turbines – use the rare earth neodymium, and the vast majority currently comes from China. The metal cobalt is used in batteries: about half of the world’s reserves are in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The many different minerals required for electric vehicle batteries. Dimitrios Karamitros / Shutterstock (data: Transport & Environment)
Historically, mining has caused significant social and environmental harm in host countries – frequently developing nations – while delivering most of the benefits to consumers in wealthier countries.
Wealthier countries could just turn a blind eye to those harms, but there is a growing awareness of the impact of mining. This, combined with the concentration of supplies in certain countries, creates a challenge for places like the UK, which don’t have critical mineral resources.
Disruptive technologies
New extraction technologies are emerging in the UK and elsewhere. While some companies are making progress with “green mining” – using electric vehicles and renewable energy – the most promising solutions are more radical.
One new avenue is recovering geothermal energy alongside critical minerals. The hot fluids beneath ancient volcanoes can be rich in lithium, gold, silver and other critical elements, with each volcanic system offering its own distinct mix of resources.
Tapping into this heat can offer a double benefit: clean energy and useful minerals. In Cornwall, south-west England, there are plans to do this at a reopened lithium mine.
Synthetic biology is another exciting development. This involves scientists modifying microbe DNA to selectively scavenge specific elements from their surroundings, such as battery waste and sewage sludge. These micro-organisms could recover resources even in extreme environments.
Read more:
As mining returns to Cornwall, lithium ambitions tussle with local heritage
Circular resources
Making better use of the resources we already have is essential. This goes beyond traditional recycling to develop new ways to turn by-products and discarded materials into valuable resources, while simultaneously cleaning up legacy pollution.
For example, mining tailings and coal fly ash contain recoverable metals, and innovative “smart” minerals and microbes can be harnessed to extract them.
However, recycling alone won’t meet future demand. Many metals, while highly recyclable, remain in use for decades before re-entering the supply chain. Take nickel, for instance. It’s an important battery metal, but can stay in circulation for 30 years or more, limiting its availability in the short term.
Many minerals crucial for phones or batteries come from artisanal mines in DR Congo. Erberto Zani / Alamy
Mining that does not curse the locals
Future mining must avoid the “resource curse” – the paradox where resource-rich countries often fail to benefit fully from their own mineral wealth. Principles for a new approach should include investment in local industries in producer countries so they can make batteries and magnets, not just export ore.
They should also require genuine community engagement, giving mining de facto permission and acceptance from locals. This unwritten set of positive (or at least tolerant) attitudes is sometimes termed the “social licence” to operate – and without it, mining operations can fail.
Mining companies should promote best practices with regard to the environment, health and safety, and workers rights. Regulators need to enforce environmental protection with teeth, including rewilding and ecosystem restoration after a mine has been emptied.
The mining industry has a bad reputation for a reason, with a history of high-profile environmental disasters. The growing emphasis on environmental, social and governance criteria for investors is encouraging, and may help deliver change.
The UK government’s new strategy outlines promising goals on domestic development, the circular economy and supply chain resilience – but its measures of success don’t match the ambition. Its support for innovation is also cautious and focuses on established approaches. What’s needed is an entirely new way of thinking about how to secure these resources.
This means recovering materials from new sources, using them more wisely, ensuring mining communities benefit, and cleaning up environmental damage. It also means building resilient supply chains that can withstand a major change of government, an economic crash, or some other geopolitical shock.
The Chancellor has announced £820m of funding to guarantee paid work placements for 18 to 21-year-olds “not earning or learning” for over 18 months.
The funding will pay for three years of the Youth Guarantee scheme offering young people in England an apprenticeship, training, education, or help to find a job.
Latest figures show almost a million young people not in education, employment or training – known as Neets.
Making her Budget speech on Wednesday, Rachel Reeves said the money would “give the young people who were let down by the Conservatives the support and opportunity they deserve”.
Under the scheme, 18 to 21-year-olds on Universal Credit for 18 months without working or studying will be offered six-month paid work placements – and those not taking up the offer face being stripped of their benefits.
Reeves also announced the government would be funding a scheme to make apprenticeship training for under-25s at small and medium businesses “completely free”.
Nick Harrison, CEO of education think tank the Sutton Trust, welcomed the planned changes to apprenticeship schemes but called on the government to go further.
“Apprenticeships have the potential to be a powerful tool for social mobility, offering an alternative route to highly skilled industries,” he said.
Association of Colleges head David Hughes said the money would enable colleges to support more young people so they do not end up not in education, employment or training.
But he said more money was needed, adding: “To fully support the nearly one million young people who are Neets, there will need to be more adult education funding, and to ensure millions of adults are not left behind by the tech and green revolutions we are seeing before our eyes, that budget will need to grow even more.”
Lancaster University warned the scheme may be “too blunt an instrument to successfully support young people into secure and sustained employment”.
Rebecca Florisson, lead analyst at the university’s Work Foundation, said the “evidence is clear that forcing individuals into ‘any job’ can do more harm than good to their future employment prospects.”
The announcement comes amid rising concern about youth inactivity. Nearly 946,000 people aged 16 to 24 are currently Neets – around one in eight of the age group – close to an 11-year high.
The DWP recently launched an investigation into why the figure is so stubbornly high.
The jobs market is particularly challenging for young people, with 2025 figures showing a falling number of vacancies and fewer people on payrolls.
Official stats on Neets include stay-at-home parents as well as jobseekers.
The majority of young people (580,000) who are Neets fall into the economically inactive category, compared to 366,000 who are unemployed.
A rise in long-term sickness among young people has been one of the main causes of economic inactivity over the past three years, according to research by the Youth Futures Foundation.
Youth Guarantee funding formed part of a wider welfare reform package in the Budget, where Reeves said the system should “protect people who cannot work and empower those who can”.
Forecasts released alongside the Budget by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) predict relatively few inactive people returning to work before the next election, despite the changes.
The legal minimum wage for over-21s is to rise 4.1% in April, from £12.21 to £12.71 per hour, with the wage for 18 to 20-year-olds rising from £10 to £10.85.
Some businesses – especially in the hospitality sector – have warned this could put companies off hiring young people, undoing the government’s efforts to increase youth employment.
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Pets at Home is in the doghouse. And not the padded fabric kind found on the retailer’s own shelves. The UK purveyor of pet food, supplies and medicine is getting mauled: in the past six months, pre-tax profit at its retail business, which makes up around two-thirds of revenue, the rest coming from sales to vets, fell by over 80 per cent.
Dog demographics are not on Pets At Home’s side. The great pandemic pet boom created a surge in demand for beds, collars, crates and treats as new owners kitted out a new generation of companions. Those mollycoddled pups have aged into a cohort of adults requiring less in the way of maintenance. The overall dog market is about flat in sales terms, the company posits, accessories suffering more than food.
The decline in Pets At Home’s revenue suggests it is faring worse than the average, and gross profitability has been dented by competition. The problem, it would appear, is that canines have fashion trends too, which Pets At Home has misjudged.
In accessories — theoretically the business with the highest gross margins — online rivals such as Amazon and Temu are tough to beat on price, analysts at RBC note. Both, along with online pet platforms like Pets Corner and the US’s Chewy, are nimbler in spotting the next big thing, be it GPS-enabled collars or smart feeders.
Meanwhile, dog food is no longer just dried pellets. It can be raw, freeze-dried, insect-based or probiotic. Startups like Butternut Box and The Farmer’s Dog, which offer a subscription-based experience, and Tuggs, which produces insect-based food, have turned pet food into a lifestyle choice. Online platforms are aggressively staking a claim on that market too.
Pets At Home is partly to blame for its woes. Investing in food and accessory innovation might get sales growing again. As the pandemic pet generation ages, demographics should become more favourable: more supplements and orthopaedic dog beds.
The challenges Pets At Home faces are not dissimilar to those of High Street fashion retailers, struggling to compete with cheaper and quicker internet giants. The group’s valuation, at less than one times this year’s forecast revenue according to S&P Capital IQ, reflects that.
Across the Atlantic, shares in US petcare chain Petco have slumped nearly 90 per cent in five years. Pets are easy to love; listed pet stores, it turns out, not so much.
Simon GilbertPolitical Reporter, Coventry and Warwickshire
BBC
Charnjit Saranna’s firm EZOO leases out hundreds of electric vehicles
Charging electric vehicle owners tax per mile could “cause friction” in the drive to phase out diesel and petrol cars, according to the boss of an electric car leasing firm.
It was confirmed in Wednesday’s Budget that electric car drivers will pay a road charge of 3p per mile from April 2028, while plug-in hybrid drivers will pay 1.5p per mile, with the rates going up each year with inflation.
The government plans to phase out sales of new petrol and diesel cars by 2030 in an effort to reduce vehicles’ effect on climate change.
Charnjit Saranna, who founded electric car leasing firm EZOO, based in Coventry, said she feared the Chancellor’s new tax could make EVs seem less appealing.
Speaking after watching the Budget at a Coventry and Warwickshire Chamber of Commerce event, she said: “It’s a shame because I think everybody’s working really hard towards the 2030 deadline.
“I think you begin to see some traction towards people switching from petrol and diesel to electric. I hope this isn’t going to hinder it.”
Coventry and Warwickshire Chamber of Commerce
Members of Coventry and Warwickshire Chamber of Commerce watched the Budget together at a special event
The government’s independent forecaster, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), itself said the new charge was “likely to reduce demand for electric cars as it increases their lifetime cost”.
Under the new measures, an electric car driver clocking up 8,500 miles in the 2028-29 financial year is expected to pay about £255 – about half the cost per mile that petrol and diesel drivers pay in fuel tax.
However, Ms Saranna said she was optimistic electric vehicles would still offer better value for money.
She said: “It shouldn’t deter people from driving an electric car because ultimately overall it is cheaper than driving petrol or diesel.”
BBC
BBC
Coventry and Warwickshire Chamber of Commerce